Film festival screens local moviemakers' short film

Thomas Derrick, Mitch Walck, William Derrick and Jacob Washington on location. Walck and the Derrick brothers make up Indiendo Productions.

On weekends when most 10-year-olds were riding bikes and playing in dirt, three Waynesboro, Pa., boys were making movies.

Today, as adults, William Derrick, his brother, Thomas Derrick, and their childhood friend, Mitch Walck, are still making movies under the shingle of Indiendo Productions.

“We were always making videos,” said William Derrick, 26, of Waynesboro. “And that’s just sort of how, with our age and as we grew and matured, our passion for filmmaking and the way that we made films did as well. We eventually decided it’s what we know and what inspires us. We’re going to try to make a career out of it.”

Friday night at the Maryland International Film Festival-Hagerstown, the trio will premiere their latest short film, “Lion.”

“Lion” is about two men — one older and one younger — who meet one night at a bar and who develop a friendship.

“It’s a very dialogue-heavy film,” Derrick said. “The details of his character and the story are portrayed through dialogue.”

It took more than a year for the group to work on the script before it even got in front of the camera, Derrick said. And the film was shot in four days on location in Waynesboro, Greencastle, Pa., and Cascade.

“That was a very intense experience, I think I got a total of 10 hours of sleep,” he said.

After spending months in post-production, which included Derrick writing the film’s score, they were able to get “Lion” ready in time for submission to MDIFF.

The trio splits up the jobs while they’re putting any film together. Derrick said he’s the writer. He writes the scores but is also the film’s producer. Walck is the director. And Thomas Derrick is in charge of cinematography and does the post-production editing.

William Derrick said they have been working together so long that they have an understanding of what the finished product will be.

“We’re true perfectionist and we need to have every aspect of the filmmaking process perfect,” he said.

For Derrick, who also works as a part-time substitute teacher for the Waynesboro School District and waits tables, “Lion” is another step to fulfilling their dream: a full-length feature.

The concept of “Lion” actually came out of working on script for a feature. The short film would act like a prequel to the feature film.

“We had the idea for the feature. We thought to raise funds or try to get feature interested to do a short film, with a story sort of like a subplot to the feature,” he explained.

The ultimate hope is that someone at MDIFF, or any might see it and be willing to fund the feature for Indiendo Productions.

This is the second time Indiendo Productions had a film shown at MDIFF. In the 2011, another short film, “Machine Room,” was shown.

Derrick said their mission as filmmakers is to make the audience think.

“All of our films, I believe, are pretty thought-provoking. That’s what I’d like to believe,” he said. “That’s the reason we do them. We don’t really consider ourselves entertainers. We try to make films for the purpose of thinking something different.”